Hunted by the Dark

"When the bloke who tried to kill you says 'get up or I'll leave you for the Panthers,' you don't ask follow-up questions. You get up. Legs optional, apparently."

The dust storm hit us like a living thing.

One moment we were moving through darkness, the next we were swallowed by a wall of wind and grit that seemed determined to tear the skin from my bones. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't do anything except stumble forward with the man’s grip on my arm the only anchor in a world that had dissolved into chaos.

This is how I die, I thought. Choked on alien dust in the middle of nowhere, wearing my father's clothes.

The absurdity of it almost made me laugh. Almost. But there wasn't enough air in my lungs for laughter, barely enough for survival.

The man pulled me onward, his movements confident despite the storm. He knew where he was going. Had to. Because I certainly didn't—couldn't see more than a foot in front of my face, couldn't tell up from down or forward from back. The only constant was his hand on my arm, bruising-tight, dragging me through the maelstrom.

Behind us—or what I thought was behind us—growls still echoed. That inhuman sound I'd heard from the tent, rising and falling like some terrible omen. And beneath it, human voices. Shouting. Crying out in fear or pain or both.

Jamie, I thought. Is that Jamie? Is he—

"Don't stop," the man growled, and I realised I'd slowed without meaning to, my body turning instinctively toward the sounds of distress.

They need help. My father needs help. I should—

But what could I do? I could barely stand. Could barely walk. What help could I offer anyone when I was being half-carried through a dust storm by the man who'd once wanted me dead?

Nothing, I answered myself. You can do nothing. You're useless. You've always been useless.

The self-pity was familiar, at least. An old companion, well-worn and comfortable. I'd carried it since I was seventeen, since I'd dropped out of school and taken the courier job and watched Mum's face fall even as she told me she was proud of me.

Proud of what? Proud of a son who can't even hold onto a dog?

The dust tore at my exposed skin—my arms, my face, my bare feet. Every step drove fine particles between my toes, coating my soles in grit that turned each footfall into a small agony. I should have put on shoes. Should have done a lot of things.

Should have stayed in Tasmania. Should have never gone looking for answers. Should have let Jamie Greyson stay dead in my mind where he belonged.

But I hadn't. And now I was here, wherever here was, stumbling through darkness toward a destination I didn't know, led by a man I couldn't trust.

The storm began to ease. Not completely—the wind still howled, the dust still swirled—but the worst of it had passed, leaving us in a strange twilight of settling particles and muted sounds. The screaming had faded to nothing, swallowed by distance or ended by something I didn't want to think about.

I risked a glance backward.

The camp was gone.

Not destroyed—at least, I didn't think so—but invisible. Hidden behind veils of dust and the simple tyranny of distance. The fire that had seemed so bright and welcoming hours ago was nothing now. Not even a glow on the horizon. Just darkness stretching in every direction, broken only by the soft green luminescence hanging around the man’s neck.

Gone, I thought. All of it. Everyone.

The grief hit me harder than I expected. I'd known these people for days. That was all. A handful of meals, a few conversations, one impromptu musical performance around a campfire. Nothing that should have mattered. Nothing that should have carved this hollow space in my chest.

But it did matter. Because they'd been kind to me. Because Jamie had carried me to the lagoon and brought me back from death. Because Glenda had stitched my throat and splinted my finger. Because Luke had brought me dinner and Chris had volunteered for road-building and Karen had rolled her eyes at her husband's optimism.

Because for the first time in my life, I'd had a father. A real one. Present and alive and trying, however awkwardly, to figure out how to be a dad to a son he'd never known.

And now he was back there, somewhere in the darkness, and I was here.

He'll look for me, I told myself again. When the storm passes, when whatever attacked them is gone, he'll look.

But even the hope felt hollow now. The camp was too far behind. The night was too dark. And I was being taken somewhere no one would think to search.

My legs gave out without warning.

One moment I was walking—stumbling, really, but moving—and the next I was on the ground, my knees hitting the dust with a jarring impact that sent pain shooting up through my thighs. I tried to catch myself with my hands, but my arms were too weak, and I ended up face-first in the dirt, breathing in mouthfuls of the stuff that tasted like copper and ash.

Get up, I told myself. Get up, get up, get up—

But my body wasn't listening. My body had decided, without consulting the rest of me, that it was done. Finished. No more steps, no more stumbling, no more pretending I was capable of this.

Pathetic, some part of me whispered. Can't even walk properly. Can't even—

"Get up."

The man’s voice cut through my self-recrimination. Cold. Flat. The voice of a man stating a fact rather than making a request.

I tried. I really did. Got my hands under me, pushed, felt my arms trembling with the effort of lifting my own weight. Managed to get to my knees before the strength gave out again and I slumped sideways, catching myself against a rock I hadn't known was there.

"I can't," I gasped. The words scraped against my throat like broken glass. "I can't. My legs—"

"Get up," he repeated. "Or I leave you for the Panthers."

Panthers?

The word registered slowly, filtering through exhaustion and fear and the ringing in my ears.

"What—" I started, and then I heard it.

A growl.

Low. Rumbling. Coming from somewhere in the darkness to our left.

Not a dog's growl. Not anything I'd ever heard before. This was deeper, more resonant, a sound that seemed to vibrate through the ground itself and settle in my bones like ice water.

Something's out there.

The realisation cut through my exhaustion. My head snapped toward the sound, my eyes straining uselessly against the darkness. I couldn't see anything. The luminescent thing around the man’s neck cast its soft green glow in a circle maybe three feet wide, and beyond that was nothing. Absolute black. A void that could have contained anything.

Panthers. He said Panthers.

"What was that?" I asked, fear giving my voice a strength it hadn't had moments before.

The man didn't answer. He was scanning the darkness, his posture shifted from irritation to alertness. The blade was in his hand again—I hadn't seen him draw it—catching the luminescent-light and gleaming like a sliver of captured moon.

Another growl. Closer this time. Or maybe from a different direction—it was impossible to tell in the darkness, impossible to orient myself in a world without landmarks or light.

"What was it?" I asked again, more urgently.

"Get up." His voice was different now. Still cold, but with an edge beneath it. Something that might have been concern, or might have been the calculation of a man reassessing how much trouble his cargo was worth.

This time, I got up.

I don't know where the strength came from. Fear, probably. The primal, lizard-brain terror that bypassed exhaustion and pain and told my body in no uncertain terms that lying on the ground meant death. My legs screamed in protest, my vision swam, but I was standing. Barely. Swaying like a drunk at closing time, but vertical.

The man grabbed my arm and pulled me forward.

We moved faster now, or tried to. My legs still wouldn't cooperate properly—each step felt like wading through treacle, like those dreams where you're running but going nowhere—but the man’s grip was relentless, hauling me along whether my body wanted to follow or not.

"We're being hunted," he said, answering my question too late and not nearly enough.

"Hunted by what?"

The words came out ragged, punctuated by my laboured breathing. We were moving uphill now—I could feel the incline in the burn of my calves, the way gravity seemed to be actively fighting our progress.

The man was silent for what felt like an eternity. I could sense his hesitation, the calculation of how much to tell me, whether the information would help or hinder.

"The darkness," he finally replied.

The darkness.

What kind of answer was that? What kind of place was Clivilius that it had monsters hunting its inhabitants? How did I even get to this fucked up place?

My heart pleaded for answers, but my instinctual brain reminded me that now wasn't the time.

I have to keep up with the man to survive whatever madness is out here.

Another growl split the night—this one from behind us, I was almost certain. Were there more than one? How many? Were they surrounding us, herding us, driving us toward some trap I couldn't see?

Stop thinking. Just move.

I focused on the man’s back, on the green glow around his neck, on putting one foot in front of the other. The origami of survival: fold here, crease there, follow the pattern even when you can't see the final shape.

One step. Another. Another.

Mum's voice in my head, patient as always: One bite at a time, Joel. That's how you eat an elephant.

This elephant might eat me first, I thought, and the absurdity of it almost broke me.